Cathie from Canada

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Blog, blog against the dying of the light"

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Vancouver Three: political martyrs

So the Vancouver Three prosecution isn't political, eh? The prosecution's own words prove it is.Here, as quoted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly is why the DEA went after Marc Emery. And it has nothing at all to do with a few seeds. It's aimed at taking Emery DOWN. It's personal and it's political. And pathetic. DEA boss Karen Tandy said:

Today's arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement . . . Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

And here is how Connelly describes the impact of that statement

In their search for proof that Bigfoot exists, researchers ought to take hair samples from the Washington, D.C., offices of Drug Enforcement Administration boss Karen Tandy. Tandy has left giant footprints on the drug prosecution of Vancouver, B.C., mail-order pot entrepreneur, and B.C. Marijuana Party founder, Marc Emery. With an ill-advised statement politicizing the case that also misspelled Emery's first name, the DEA boss may help transform a publicity seeker into a Canadian martyr. Seeking to stop his extradition to the United States -- where he faces charges of trafficking in marijuana seeds -- Emery's legal team could use Tandy's words to telling effect: Their client is being prosecuted for his beliefs.

Well, yes, he is. And that's exactly what Canadians are beginning to realize.